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Two federal law enforcement agencies fight with each other as they continue to infringe on the privacy rights of the American people. While the FBI and ATF are duplicating effort and wasting time and money, the cost to taxpayers isn't the most worrisome aspect of these two federal agencies. Their use of illegitimate powers to spy on and harass American citizens is a much greater concern.

In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) was brought under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department. This placed the agency alongside the FBI. Formerly a division of the Treasury Department, the BATF has also acquired jurisdiction over illegal use of explosives and is being redesignated as the BATFE.

When the Attorney General, the boss of both agencies, recently ordered them to merge their bomb databases, the FBI refused. Then, because the BATF uses bomb-sniffing dogs, the FBI decided to initiate its own division with a similar purpose.

Reports continue to surface about members of one group threatening to arrest members of the other at crime scenes because each agency competes for jurisdiction, for obtaining evidence, and for credit about some dubious accomplishment. The two agencies are now squabbling over investigations of tobacco smuggling in the states of the southeast.

A more important and virtually immediate response to the 9/11 tragedy saw Congress pass the Patriot Act. This falsely labeled piece of legislation, enacted by Congress when not one member had even read it, gave power to federal agencies to invade the privacy of the American people without obtaining a warrant as required by the Constitution's Fourth Amendment.

If possessed before 9/11, would the powers contained in the Patriot Act have prevented the attacks? Absolutely not! As numerous commentators have stated, the surveillance capabilities contained in the Act are now being used against American citizens, not to fight terror, but to conduct searches of Americans and seizures of their property.

The BATFE and the FBI are only two of many federal agencies possessing police powers. The FBI was begun as an investigatory body that later acquired such powers. Now, the federal government has numerous other police agencies in the fields covered by BATFE — and also in many other fields, such protecting the environment.

James Madison spelled out the way the federal government was to be limited in Federalist #45: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in state governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.... The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and prosperity of the state."

The cost of these two agencies isn't the largest concern they present. They have become useful for those who seek total government power in our nation.

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